In recent years, a demand to use data in a mobile terminal such as a smartphone, a tablet PC, or the like for operations in an office has increased, and a function that can cause the mobile terminal and an MFP (Multi-Function Peripheral) to cooperate has appeared. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2014-050015 discloses a technique in which a mobile terminal and an MFP, which support short range communication and long range communication, establish long range communication by using short range communication and exchange image data by long range communication.
Particularly, the mobile terminal first establishes short range communication (for example, NFC method wireless communication) with the MFP and obtains the connection information used for establishing long range communication (for example, Wi-Fi Direct™ method wireless communication). Subsequently, upon establishing long range communication with the MFP by using the obtained connection information, the mobile terminal performs a handover from short range communication to long range communication. According to such technique, a user can easily specify (select) a communication target MFP just by holding a mobile terminal over a predetermined position on the MFP, and data exchange by long range communication between the MFP and the mobile terminal can be implemented. As a result, for example, the setting data (for example, email address data for transmission settings) held by the mobile terminal can be provided from the mobile terminal to the MFP.
In the above-described related art, short range communication for obtaining the connection information necessary to establish long range communication needs to be performed each time setting data is exchanged between the MFP and the mobile terminal. For example, in an office environment where there is only one MFP, the user is required to hold the mobile terminal over a predetermined position on the MFP for each use of the MFP even when it is originally unnecessary to select a communication target MFP. If such an operation is frequently requested, user convenience is reduced problematically.
Additionally, as an alternative method to the above-described method of obtaining the connection information by short range communication, the connection information may be obtained from the MFP by causing a QR Code™ to be displayed on the display unit of the MFP and using the camera of the mobile terminal to read the QR code. Even if this method is to be used, if the operation of holding the mobile terminal over the display unit of the MFP is frequently requested, user convenience is reduced problematically.
On the other hand, in an office environment where the MFP is used by a plurality of users, it is better in some cases to perform data exchange after confirming that a user is near the MFP. For example, consider a case in which another user performs setting data exchange using long range communication while a given user is in the middle of using the transmission function of the MFP. In this case, setting data unintended by the user using the function of the MFP may be provided to the MFP.